“I agree. And that means you’re going to have to look in the most obvious and least obvious places.”
That was when Ramsey told her about the sewage ditch.
“Did you go there?”
“No, I’m doing that first thing in the morning. I intended to go this afternoon, but I got a hit on the Boston case and ended up going into the city instead.”
“Did it pan out?” She was sounding tired again, her voice fading.
Ramsey told her about having gone through prison commissary records, focusing on the spending habits of perps who’d been arrested since 2000, looking, specifically, for chocolate-bar purchases. He hadn’t found anything significant. Then he’d looked prior to that, honing in on those prisoners who’d been released before August of 2000. And he’d made a hit. A big one.
“I paid a visit to a Boston detective I know, showed him what I had, and they brought the guy in this afternoon—he’s been working as a cook in a greasy spoon downtown for the past thirteen years. They tell the guy that they’ve got a DNA match on him for the August 2000 disappearances, which, by the way, took place shortly after his release from prison.”
“They couldn’t have a DNA match yet since you just fingered him. The match takes time.”
“Right, but they will have it in time for trial. The guy broke. They got a full confession.”
“And the girls?”
“He took them to an adoption agency half a block from where he works. They take children, no questions asked. Or they did. They’re out of business as of this afternoon. Permanently, if Boston P.D. has any say in it. They claim they were doing a good service. They had statistics that showed how many children who are victims of abuse could be saved if it were easier for parents to drop their kids off, no questions asked, and know that they’d get to a good home.”
“Rather than dropping them at a hospital or police station where they end up in the foster-care system,” Lucy said.
“Right.”
“They’re right about that. Just because someone has issues, drug and money problems, youth working against them, doesn’t mean that they don’t love their kids. They want to know they’re in loving homes. Eases their consciences if nothing else. Which is why they keep them when they can’t give them proper care. They know that they’re loved and hope that will be enough.”
Was she speaking from the experience of having grown up in such a home? Or just because of things she’d seen during her years as a cop?
“Well, it isn’t right that children can be taken from good homes and dumped without any records being searched,” he said, keeping his focus on the work.
“I agree. Any chance of finding the girls?”
“One has already been located. She’ll be returned to her rightful family sometime this next week.”
“A family she knows nothing about.”
“Correct. And she’ll be taken from the only family she’s ever known. The parents that she loves.”
Sometimes there were no good answers.
“Hopefully her biological parents will allow some kind of visitation.”
“They might.” He didn’t think so, based on the wealthy couple’s reaction when they’d been contacted late that afternoon. “And maybe it’s in the kid’s best interest to have that part of her life gone so that she can start anew.”
He left those kinds of problems and answers up to the people who knew better about emotional issues than he did. His job was to serve and protect, not nurture.
“And the second girl?”
“They haven’t located her yet. But they feel confident that they will.”
“Have her parents been notified?”
“Yeah. I rode along for the notification. They’re simple people—he works in construction and she’s a beautician— but their whole lives revolved around finding their little girl. She’s their only child and they’re so grateful she’s found. So grateful to know that she’s probably safe and well cared for. They can’t wait to see her, of course, but mostly they just want her to be all right.”
“A good day.”
Mostly. Until he couldn’t reach her. And then knew that she was hurt and he was too far away to be of any help at all.